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Stockholm acquisition adds prominent artists to museum's collection

A recent acquisition of prints by the Georgia Museum of Art adds 21 major contemporary artists to the museum’s collection and offers patrons an examination of a radical period of modern art: the 1960s.

But for a collection of art less than 50 years old, the “New York Collection for Stockholm” has a convoluted backstory.

In the early 1970s, a New York based organization called Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) began to collect works of art from prominent artists of the era, hoping to land them in a public museum. The Moderna Museet in Stockholm, which holds one of the most impressive collections of modern American art, according to a museum curator, accepted the collected works. But the artists needed to be compensated for their work.

Princess Christina of Sweden came up with a fifth of the needed funds and E.A.T. solicited exclusive prints from all involved artists — Warhol, Lichtenstein and Rauschenberg, among others — and distributed them for sale in a 300-edition portfolio to cover the rest.

The original collection, mostly sculptures and installations culled from artists’ studios, is still in Sweden. Various prints from the collection, created just for the saleable portfolio, hang permanently at museums scattered throughout the U.S.

But GMOA’s collection marks one of the few exhibitions of all the prints in the same room and perhaps the first since the early 1970s.

All the works ask one question, said Lynn Boland, Pierre Daura Curator of European Art: What is art?

The question itself isn’t new, he said, but the way in which these artists posed it was novel.

The 1960s was a revolutionary time for American art, even in light of the century’s prolific and artistically exciting first half.

“More than anything, (the collection) shows the diversity of the decade,” Boland said. “But at the same time, there are underlying ideas running through all of them, even in what seem to be very different works of art.”

Some are overtly political, given the time frame — the Vietnam era — they were created in, and many deal with what seemed, at the time, like a barrage of new media, mainly television.

By showcasing the various artistic styles emerging in the 1960s, this collection, now housed permanently at the museum, is “encyclopedic in nature,” Boland said. Everything from minimalism to post-minimalism, new media and systems art are all represented.

Of particular note is a print by Andy Warhol that finds the pop artist dabbling in conceptual art. Such stylistic experimentation is typical of the “New York Collection for Stockholm.”

The collection is open for display from today through Oct. 28.

The Georgia Museum of Art is open to the public Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.; Thursday from 10 a.m until 9 p.m.; and 1-5 p.m. Sunday.